I wanted to be there with her
downtown
before she had to work
so i could plant one on her at four
and say,"your mom grew up eight hours ahead of us.
so there's you new years kiss"
but i wasn't
i left her on facebook
with a quick,"brb"
cause i had to run to the store to buy biscuits for dinner,
and with my family,
that become a half hour trip
two blocks up the road.
I got back and she'd already left
so I watched the clock change to four,
went into the bathroom
and cut, a few times
not a full relapse.
just enough for blood,
not to feel anything,
not like i did a year ago,
screaming at the world
at the stroke up midnight,
one knife in my hand,
another somewhere on my dark bed
the neighbors riding their go-kart drunk outside.
I bite my lip
and keep my face looking rougher than most days anymore
but,
at midnight
I don't break.
And the tears and blood stay in my body tonight
leaving only old tears tracks
on my tired, bruised cheeks
and four recently dry scars
on my hairy, pre-scarred leg.
And i sit here in this worn office chair
watching peoples words flit by on this screen
when her name appears,
just home from work.
i didn't expect to see her,
but she stopped to simply wish me the best
before she collapsed onto her bed
after a long horrible day
that's left her so exhausted i can't even ask.
but she leaves and so do I
I hope she's smiling
half as much as I am,
but she probably isn't.
so I tell myself
"someday i'll make it so she is, because of me".
Sometimes the promises to myself that I'm sure are impossible
are the ones that help me fall asleep,
and I'm asleep before I hit the mattress




©Brandon Webb
2012

half hour after midnight
and she says
"help, he loves me, and it's confusing me"
i try my hardest
but it was just yesterday
i left that note on her dresser
and i know she read it;
she didn't pretend like she didn't.
So
I'm crying
and shaking as i help.
then she says
"i'll just talk to you about it tomorrow"
and we say our good nights
and our see you tomorrows
and all that.
and i look back at my empty bed
still crying
and i don't stop,
can't stop
the tears just flow
and i can't stop shaking.
so i listen to sappy love songs
occasionally wiping my desk with kleenex.
an hour later i give up
and climb into my empty bed
still shaking
still crying
sometimes i wish she really knew
sometimes i wish someone did



©Brandon Webb
2012

I think too much to sleep at night
but that's what makes me rip the mic

- IN-Q

I know how I see myself
but
I can't stop myself from wondering

who am I in the eyes of everyone else?

when someone asks me a question
during a discussion in CWP
and everyone hears me
as i stumble over my words
in the center of that quiet room,
trying to answer the simple question-
"how does that makes you feel?"
and i wonder,
how does my stumbling and stuttering
make them feel,
about me?
does it change anything?

Or when i go to bed
thinking about
the conversations i've had during the day
and wondering how those friends see me.

I've never asked,
never had the guts.

My self esteem has always been low
I've always hated myself,
Sometimes i just hope
the smiles are true,
the friendships, true.

I've never asked

Who am I?




©Brandon Webb
2012

He pulls my hand
and I stumble up the stairs
holding two backpacks, four books
and a lunchbox full of old toy cars,
nearly tripping
but landing instead on the second floor landing.

The blinds covering the window in front of me
split slightly,
just enough
for me to see her smiling eye watching me.

I don't know her name
and she doesn't know mine.
we've never said anything real to each other.
we know nothing about each other
other than that she spends a lot of time there
at her grandparents house,
speaking Portuguese, Spanish and English
and listening to Spanish rap on the balcony
loud enough to hear through the floor
of the apartment I only spend six days in a month
and over the occasional fight between my family.

That's all she knows of me;
my fleeting ghost walking with my brother past their window
thirty or so times a month,
talking
but almost inaudibly, and never to her.
wish i knew her better
than as the eye peeking through the blinds



©Brandon Webb
2012

I open the door-
three in the afternoon
my short hair windblown
and rain soaked
by the seven minute walk home
i've taken to taking
to avoid
the one who used to love me

i opened the door-
he was sitting there
too still to be in that purple chair
four feet from the door
that he only sits in
when the veins in his forehead
are popping out
themselves turning purple.
but, he was smiling;
that melancholy smile that makes me wonder,
even though i quit giving a ****
about him
when i was seven,
living with him in a bus
in a field, someplace.
with a sun lamp
and a *** plant
in the storage compartment

and she's lying there,
dressed, but barely awake
with that thin blue and white blanket
that she's had since he was young
draped over her
on that floral loveseat she's always had
a smile on her face
but tears in her eyes

he swivels the chair
to give me room to pass
but i ease instead
around the separating wall
through the kitchen
and down the hall.
a smile on my face
as i look back and he stands
that old chair complaining
as much as his back

he looks back at me
and i realize
why that look in his eyes
brought the same smile he wears
to my lips;
because he's realized
that i've won here,
that in six months
i'm gone
moving on
disconnecting myself
and becoming my own **** person

he's realized that he doesn't know me
never has

he's seen the way i shake
everytime he's less than twenty feet from me
heard
the waver in my voice

he's noticed the way
that even on good days
i open the door to the garage
five times at the most.

noticed the worry lines on my forehead
the gray hairs on my chin and head
my bitten fingernails
or the spot where I scratched
half of my mustache
right off my face

or, at least
i *** he has
hope he's realized that
there's no hope
for me and him

but
he hasn't
and that conversation
was just something else,
didn't even involve me

i can hope all i want
but until i take it all away
he's never gonna realize
that it isn't
Him
winning here

never has been



©Brandon Webb
2012

I can see tears in her eyes
as she looks down at her desk.
She's always smiling,
this is different-
a raw side of a random girl I barely know.
I write on a sticky note
"you ok? you seem sad,
what's wrong?"
I peel it off the pad
almost put it sideways on my textbook,
but instead, put it on my notebook
facing me.
she leaves for a second
i put it on my textbook
facing her.
she comes back-
i take it off,
put it back on my notebook
facing me.
a little later,
i pick it up
to put it back,
but instead
curl it up,
put it in my pocket



©Brandon Webb
2012